New commands: .phase sayrange, .phase yellrange, .phase emoterange => decides the range of respective /say, /yell & /emote messages. Useful in small phases so one group of people doesn't see emotes and chat messages of other people

​​The village itself was a quiet place, a small agricultural community near the outskirts of Eversong Woods, clinging to the banks of the river that separated it from the foreboding Ghostlands to the south. For a settlement of once quel'dorei, now sin'dorei nature, it was rather basic, lacking the elegant charm and overly dignified aesthetic of Silvermoon proper. Indeed, even a commoner from the city would've turned their nose in disgust at the sight of the settlement, and furthermore at its lackluster people. They were the few that, despite receiving nothing but the protection of a dozen guardsmen, helped keep their realm fed and functioning. Perhaps it was the overlooked nature of the farming village that made it so appealing, in the eyes of the creatures squatting in the nearby tree-line, to ravage.

​The clouds in the sky were densely clustered together, thick and heavy, overweight with cargo, which they happily poured down unto the earth below, causing a steady rain shower that had lasted for some hours. A few farmers still toiled in their parcels, acting oblivious to the fact that they were soaked, desperate to provide for their households. A few sentries, clad in bright crimson with golden finish, clutching tower shields and blades, nestled themselves beneath pavilions to stay dry. The earth was muddy and slick, pockmarked by puddles.

​In a stable off to the village's southern end, a man tended to the animals within. This settlement kept horses, as the grueling, manual labor which formed the center of farm life was not suited for the beautiful hawkstriders frequented by the more refined members of sin'dorei society. The stablekeep himself, a middle-aged lad with a thick head of earthy hair that was anything but lustrous, furrowed his brow as the equine beasts began to stir and pace their stables, snorting and shaking their manes, pawing at the ground, a layer of straw intermingled with feed and feces. The elf attempted to call for the horses, in order to bring them closer and soothe them, but no sooner had he brought his right arm up to whistle had it been grasped by something unknown and yanked so powerfully off to the right that the limb was briskly dislocated from its socket. The stableboy attempted to yell out in agony, but a large, three-digit hand clamped shut around most of his face, squeezing the side of his skull. A strong force bludgeoned the back of the elf's skull, causing his head to jerk forward, vision blurring and growing out of his focus as his ears rang. Something warm and sticky began to coat the back of his head before he felt the unknown presence brain him again, and then, felt nothing.

​The crying of the horses had reached a new pitch, and attracted the attention of one of the sentries and a few farmhands. A large predator, maybe a dragonhawk or one of the great lynxes that prowled the forest, might've began to stalk the area, and if so, needed to be removed. By the time the guard slogged through the mud, he found a small group of bewildered men and women formed around something unseen. Shock, horror and confusion masked their faces. The crimson knight had to forcefully insert himself into the crowd in order to gaze at the body of a brown-haired man, the back of his head caved in, the soaked earth around him a muddled shade of bright red.

​Shouts of panic raised up from behind the group. They turned just in time witness an inconsistent, sloppy flight of long, thick arrows pepper the side of a building, a trio of the missiles penetrating the flesh of a women, and another ripping into the thigh of another elf some feet away. By this point, the village had become alive with fear, people rushing from their homes to see what exactly was happening.

​The woodlands surrounding the village had become alive, hulking figures, partially distorted by the downpour rushing forth, bellowing thunderous cries in a harsh, primitive tongue. The older and more lived of the townsfolk knew this speech, and the color drained from their faces. The creatures in question were forest trolls, muscle-bound, tusked ruffians with skin that ranged throughout the spectrum of green. In truth, they resembled the orcs of Draenor a good deal, and from a distance the uneducated viewer would have some trouble distinguishing the two. The brutes were clad in a range of clothing and armor, scrapped-together meshes of looted chainmail, hide and wood, with some wearing not but loincloths or nothing at all. Their fat, claw-tipped fingers clutched axes and tomahawks, spears and brutish swords. They flung themselves upon the townsfolk with a fervor that could only be described as pure frenzy. They hacked and stabbed and swung indiscriminately, almost as though the trolls didn't care if their strikes even landed on anything at all.

​The guardians of the village had mobilized, quickly forming into a defensive shield-wall in the center of the village streets, urging the commoners and peasants to get behind them. They were joined by a handful of scraggly looking men and women, fathers and mothers, farmers children, and instead of finely crafted swords and shields, they held the line with hand-me-down woodaxes, sickles and spades. The invading barbarians were relishing in the act of slaughtering the stragglers, and noticed this a few moments too late. Like a pack of starving mutts, the trolls began to coalesce into the center of the village, forming a haphazard mob of mossy apes, slick with gore, both that of their victims and their own. A few of the trolls egged each-other forward, making false charges at the shield group, hoping to get a reaction out of the armed elves. And then, as though something unspoken and unheard broke, the horde of trolls flooded towards the ball of opponents.

The shield-wall interlocked into a single, unified bulwark, with so many blades acting like the tongues of snakes, flicking forward and back again, stabbing at the creatures which harassed the shield in front of it. The lack of armor upon many of the savages played in the favor of the elves, a number of eager, violent trolls slowly but surely being culled. The farmers who had joined the defensive were not fairing nearly as well. They, having arrived late, had naturally taken up the flanks of the shield-group, and with a general lack of actual martial skill and quality equipment, found themselves brutalized by the much larger, and much stronger, monsters. With their flanks overrun and back exposed, the now-comprised formation swiftly began to dissolve.

In the midst of the chaos, one of the guards broke rank and ran, discarding his shield as he went. Primal self-preservation pushed away discipline, honor and duty, the elf, a stocky male with blonde hair, sprinting away haphazardly through the gaps between buildings, hoping to somehow save himself. In his mad dash to safety, as he rounded a corner, something large struck him against the temple. The world disappeared before him, the guard having lost consciousness before his body fully slumped upon the ground.

When the man came too, he found himself in an entirely different village than he remembered. The buildings were desecrated, smoldering ruins, many of them still aflame. The trolls had set the settlement ablaze using grease-fires, the subsiding drizzle doing little to snuff out the burning rubble. The muddy street resembled a macabre, abstract pattern, mud with puddles and tiny trails of swirling, red-tainted water, bodies, elf and troll alike, littering the streets. The guard tried to move himself, but found his arms securely held in place by two of the muscular, foul-smelling ape-like things, one of them delivering a solid kick to the back of his right shin, causing his leg to buckle, when he continued to resist. As he hissed in pain, struggling to find balance, he finally heard the muttered sobbing and pitiful quivering of a number of gathered prisoners, rooted from their homes and hiding places, slowly being lead, one-by-one, to their execution. The bodies, having received a crew-cut right along the neckline, were being piled and burned off to the left, in the wreckage of what appeared to have once been a storehouse. The heads had been impaled upon carved spikes, and spread indiscriminately throughout the killing ground.

​It was here that the guard saw him. A massive troll, standing a head above the others he had seen. This difference in height may have been attributed to the ridiculously large mohawk which crowned the trolls skill, and trailed down the length of his neck, disappearing unto his back. It was a bright crimson in color, beads of red liquid near the hair suggesting that the hue was not natural, and instead dyed through some unknown method. The muscle-gorged brute was clad in the only proper suit of armor amongst the whole warband, an array of carved stone upon a layer of hides. The stone itself was etched throughout its entirety with swirling glyphs and runes, all of which glowed a bright, sickly orange. Bones decorated the length of the enchanted armor, and covering the trolls face was a mask, carved of a similar material and bestowed similar empowerment, the cackling maw and eyes of the mask engulfed in reddish-yellow.

​The other forest trolls seemed to treat this one with respect, giving him a modicum of space, identifying him as a leader of sorts. He viewed the executions from a distance, a bola consisting of three elf heads, two females and a male, dangling from his waist. A massive, four-sided warmaul was impaled, head-first, into the ground, the long hilt pointed to the sky. The stone-clad troll, and those around him, suddenly stirred with interest, taking a few steps forward. The guard turned to face why.

​One of the prisoners had broken from the line and was running for it. It was a small girl, still in her single digits. She was wearing a pretty blue dress, one that her father likely spent a good deal on, now soaked in rain and covered in mud. The child was crying, babbling incoherently, begging for someone, anyone, to take her home. She was fleeing as fast as her stubby little legs could carry her, stumbling and tripping, each time requiring her to scramble back up and try again.

​The stone-clad troll looked to one of his subordinates, and silently raised a gauntlet, gesturing to the trolls spear, which was quickly surrendered to the leader. The warleader began to slowly pace forward, flipping the javelin in his hands, the tip now facing the ground. He brought the spear up into a ready position above his shoulder.

​The guards eyes, bloodshot and pinkish from sweat and exhaustion, widened as he realized what was about to happen.

"​Stop! Stop!​" The bound elf begged, causing his holders to sneer down at him, snarling something in their tongue towards him.

​The masked troll slung the spear forward.

​The missile flew through the air, catching water upon it as it soared. The elf child was nearing the gate, already out of breath, her feet unsteady. She could not take another step before the tip of the spear vanished below the back of her left shoulder. No sooner had it emerged from the front of her dress, the metal tip and wooden shaft having now been painted a shade of red, had she pitched forward unto her face into the mud, laying there. The slow movements of the child's torso showed that it was still alive, but barely.

​The masked troll examined his kill from a distance, before slowly turning his head to lock eyes with the guardsman. There was no emotion to be held within the visage of the death's head mask. No ounce of pity or spite or hate or anything. It was cold and dead, and it simply turned away from the restrained elf, and back to the executions.

​Less than an hour had passed before finally, the held guard, the coward, was the only one remaining in the entire village. The rain had stopped, leaving in its wake a terrible stench, that of ash mixed with gore, vomit and the bodily waste of the dead. The guard felt his stomach churn, but did not notice it, instead bracing himself for what he believed to be his own end, for the masked troll had begun to approach him. The warleader squatted down, removing the large difference in height as he leveled the carved glare of his mask with that of the mans face, the elf forced to lock his eyes with that of the trolls. The brute lifted a hand, his digits extending, one of them making contact with the side of the mans skull. The presence of something sharp, which pricked the skin of the guard just enough to draw blood, revealed that the troll had sharp, claw-like tips carved into the finger-plates of his gauntlet. He slowly drug the tip down the side of his victims face, drawing a thin line of blood, nothing more than a sting.

"​When the others come, tell them what you have witnessed this day.​"

The troll spoke near-perfect Thalassian, his accent practically non-existent in terms of grammar. He stared the elf down for a few more minutes, drinking deep from the guards hatred for him, and fear of him, before he finally stood, and began to walk away. As he turned, he made a simple, dismissive gesture to the two brutes holding him, a few waves of the hand, motioning for the elf to be released. One of the two grunted, the other silent, and both of the savages tossed the guard forward, forcing him into the grisly mud, one delivering a fierce kick to the guards ribs.

​The trolls simply collected their weapons, and from the bodies of the dead and their looted houses, trophies, before they dispersed from the ruins. They lumbered towards the trees, and upon reaching the edge of woodland, disappeared back into the wilds, leaving nothing but carnage and misery in their wake.